We launched an e-commerce site — here’s the real cost in 2024 and what we messed up

We went through a similar path on the ready-to-wear side. Since the beginning of 2024, our shipping costs eat up 14% of our turnover. Our return rate is around 22%. In the first 6 months of the year, we spent 65,000 TL on software, but what we poured into Meta ads reached 380,000 TL. Anyone who doesn't budget for advertising properly from the get-go simply won't survive.

i couldn't agree more on the photography costs. we thought we could just shoot with our phones and call it a day but on the site the products ended up looking like a flea market stall... we had no choice but to rent a studio and hire a professional lighting tech and photographer; just two days of shooting ended up costing us 45,000 TL. but if we hadn't done it we wouldn't have sold anything at all.

For anyone starting out, the 2024 budget breakdown should roughly look like this: 1) 20% for software, integrations, and technical infrastructure, 2) 15% for professional photography, visuals, and product content creation, 3) 15% for shipping carrier deals, packaging, and a buffer fund for returns, 4) 50% directly allocated to digital advertising and customer acquisition.

As a wholesaler, why on earth did you jump straight into your own website? If you had opened storefronts on the major marketplaces first to see what sells check your return rates and get a feel for packaging logistics, you wouldn't have had to shoulder such heavy upfront costs. Driving traffic to your own site from scratch is literally the most expensive route.

When negotiating shipping agreements, pay close attention to the volumetric weight multiplier added per desi. In apparel using vacuum bags or compression packaging directly cuts your desi costs in half. Just by changing our packaging, we slashed our monthly shipping bill by 25,000 TL.

instead of pouring all that cash into software packages it makes way more sense to start open-source and dump the rest straight into ads then if you're not getting traffic it doesn't maatter what platform your site runs on anyway.

This is an incredibly valuable experience to share. In e-commerce, the first order never turns a profit; that order is purely your cost of customer acquisition. The real money is made when you land the second and third sale with that same customer. You've spent 510,000 TL, but if you can leverage the customer database you've built to drive repeat purchases through email marketing and loyalty campaigns, that investment will pay for itself.

I'm a small business, let me explain from my side. When the closure decision was made is as decisive as the decision itself.

Same here.

This thread is archived. Start with a small trial; don't commit to everything at once.

We've heard this a lot, but it never happened like that for us. Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

Thanks for writing this, that's the right way. The harder it is to reverse a decision, the slower you should make it.

Generally correct, but one part is missing. The reason for failure isn't one big mistake, but the accumulation of small decisions.

If you post the result here, it will help others too.

I agree, and I'd like to emphasize that. Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently.

Just leaving this note, it might be useful.

Quick summary for newcomers: Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

When making a decision, first look at what data you have on hand. like if you post the result here, it will help others too.

I think its hard to be that definitive about e-commerce setup cost. Extending terms makes customers happy but turns you into a financing institution.

Let me speak from the other side; I'm on the supplier side. If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

This is my opinion, I'm not claiming it's absolute truth.

Same here. Everyone rushing into e-commerce setup cost gets stuck at the same point.

If you post the result here, it will help others too.